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brennanlafaro 's review for:
Hyperion
by Dan Simmons
3.5 stars bumped up for Goodreads.
Hyperion is a tough one to rate and review, and I can see my thoughts and numbers changing when and if I take on book 2, The Fall of Hyperion. One of the main things I look for in a book series is that when I hit the last page of book one, I’m either going to the bookshelf to get book 2 or ordering it from amazon. In the case of this book, we are left on a cliffhanger, but I’m not feeling the need for instant resolution.
Back the truck up a minute. So, the story is about a group of seven individuals who come together to take a pilgrimage to the planet of Hyperion and its’ notorious time tombs, and the planets’ looming terror/myth/religious curiosity: the shrike. The part of the story not told in flashback is pretty sparse. At a guess, it probably takes up less than 100/482 pages. There is also not a ton of shrike in what I anticipated would be a shrike story. This is a shame considering it is set up to be something of an omniscient, omnipresent, razor sharp murder monster.
During the run time, most of the seven main characters tell the story of what brings them on this pilgrimage, and this is where we spend most of our read. The stories all have links present to either the planet, the other stories, or both, and the way that vaguely related stories are tied together via overarching narrative reminded me favorably of Chuck Pahlaniuk’s Haunted or David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas.
Cloud Atlas May be a more apt comparison because Simmons does a masterful job of applying different styles to each story. Among the collection, we get an Orson Scott Card-esque tale of alien planet colonization, a Robert E Howard type immortal warrior story, a writer’s experience with the shrike (in the most shrike heavy story we get) that evokes Edgar Allan Poe, as well as a noir detective story tinged with science fiction that has some Blade Runner elements to it.
Make no mistake, the stories are very strong, and the scholar’s tale is grade A science fiction drama. It is beautifully tragic, but the narrative attempting to hold them together doesn’t quite do enough to require me to go forward. It feels as though the story(ies) I was interested in have been told, and I’m good with that.
Hyperion is a tough one to rate and review, and I can see my thoughts and numbers changing when and if I take on book 2, The Fall of Hyperion. One of the main things I look for in a book series is that when I hit the last page of book one, I’m either going to the bookshelf to get book 2 or ordering it from amazon. In the case of this book, we are left on a cliffhanger, but I’m not feeling the need for instant resolution.
Back the truck up a minute. So, the story is about a group of seven individuals who come together to take a pilgrimage to the planet of Hyperion and its’ notorious time tombs, and the planets’ looming terror/myth/religious curiosity: the shrike. The part of the story not told in flashback is pretty sparse. At a guess, it probably takes up less than 100/482 pages. There is also not a ton of shrike in what I anticipated would be a shrike story. This is a shame considering it is set up to be something of an omniscient, omnipresent, razor sharp murder monster.
During the run time, most of the seven main characters tell the story of what brings them on this pilgrimage, and this is where we spend most of our read. The stories all have links present to either the planet, the other stories, or both, and the way that vaguely related stories are tied together via overarching narrative reminded me favorably of Chuck Pahlaniuk’s Haunted or David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas.
Cloud Atlas May be a more apt comparison because Simmons does a masterful job of applying different styles to each story. Among the collection, we get an Orson Scott Card-esque tale of alien planet colonization, a Robert E Howard type immortal warrior story, a writer’s experience with the shrike (in the most shrike heavy story we get) that evokes Edgar Allan Poe, as well as a noir detective story tinged with science fiction that has some Blade Runner elements to it.
Make no mistake, the stories are very strong, and the scholar’s tale is grade A science fiction drama. It is beautifully tragic, but the narrative attempting to hold them together doesn’t quite do enough to require me to go forward. It feels as though the story(ies) I was interested in have been told, and I’m good with that.